Let’s face it, the search on many websites is woeful. You remember seeing an article a couple of days ago, go back to find it using the site’s own search engine, and then spend the next half hour finding anything but the article you want. However, you don’t need to rely on the crummy search engines used by many sites. Here’s how to search a specific website using Google.

Search a specific website using Google

I’m going to use The Big Tech Question as an example here, but don’t think for a second this is some kind of mea culpa. Our search engine is genuinely very good.

However, if you want to use Google to search our website – and only our website – here’s what you have to enter in the Google search box:

site:bigtechquestion.com search query

(Where “search query” is, of course, what you’re searching for.)

Note, there’s no space before or after the colon. And that you don’t normally have to enter the www or http:// – the domain name should be fine. It even works for subdomains (or sections) of websites. So, if I wanted to search the BBC News site for stories about my local MP, Nicholas Soames, I’d enter:

site:bbc.co.uk/news nicholas soames

You can still use other search-engine tricks in your search queries to narrow down results further. If I wanted to ensure that I didn’t get random results about people called Nicholas or Soames from the BBC search above, I could type:

site:bbc.co.uk/news “nicholas soames”

This will ensure results are only returned where the names Nicholas and Soames appear next to one another, greatly increasing the chances of eradicating results about people I don’t want to read about.

About the author

Barry Collins

Barry has scribbled about tech for almost 20 years for The Sunday Times, PC Pro, WebUser, Which? and many others. He was once Deputy Editor of Mail Online and remains in therapy to this day. Email Barry at barry@bigtechquestion.com.